Man shoves Asian woman to death in front of Times Square subway train: police

The police told the New York Post that the incident occurred at 9:40 a.m. Saturday when the unidentified woman was struck by a southbound R train at the Times Square N/Q/R line on West 42nd Street and Broadway.

Sources say the attack seemed random. The victim was with two other women when she was pushed, a police source said.

"A person of interest has been taken into custody," the department spokeswoman said, according to the New York Post. A man walked into a transit precinct on Canal Street and confessed, sources said. The suspect, who has a gray beard and was wearing black hooded jacket, stuck his tongue out at photographers as he was being led into the Midtown South precinct on West 35th Street, the report says.

He was identified as Simon Martial, 61, with no known address, according to law enforcement sources. "He is crazy, talking gibberish," said one law enforcement source. Martial later yelled "go f*ck yourself" at reporters as police escorted him out of the precinct, according to the New York Post.

Martial has an extensive criminal record with at least three arrests going back to 1998, when he was busted for robbery. The latest arrest was in October 2019 for criminal possession of a controlled substance. According to state records, he served two years in state prison for attempted robbery and was released in August 2021.

According to the New York Post, Wai Wah Chin, charter president of the Chinese American Citizens Alliance of Greater New York, called the incident “horrifying.”

“It’s a horrible attack on yet another one of our citizens. This has to stop,” she said. “We have to make the streets and subways safe for all of our citizens, especially our Asian women.”

Anti-Asian hate crimes have spiked across America during the COVID-19 pandemic. Particularly in New York City, there have been numerous reports of Asian residents being randomly assaulted in brutal attacks.

Yao Pan Ma, a 61-year-old Asian man, was horrifically and brutally attacked on April 23, 2021, in East Harlem. Sadly, he didn't recover from the spring 2021 attack and the NYPD announced last week that he has succumbed to his injuries.

Ma, an out-of-work Chinese immigrant, was repeatedly kicked in the head last year when he was collecting cans at Third Avenue and 125th Street. The lone assailant was seen in video footage stomping on Ma's head knocked onto the concrete.

Ex-convict Jarrod Powell, who claimed he acted in self-defense, was identified on video assaulting Ma and caught days after the apparent anti-Asian attack, which left the hate crime victim comatose in critical condition before the Dec. 31 death.